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obliged to contract debts. This is a very serious
matter. Even if the peasants could obtain money
at five or six per cent., the position of the debtors
would be bad enough, but it is in reality much worse,
for the village usurers consider twenty or twenty-five
per cent. a by no means exorbitant rate of interest.
A laudable attempt has been made to remedy this state
of things by village banks, but these have proved
successful only in certain exceptional localities.
As a rule the peasant who contracts debts has a hard
struggle to pay the interest in ordinary times, and
when some misfortune overtakes him—­when,
for instance, the harvest is bad or his horse is stolen—­he
probably falls hopelessly into pecuniary embarrassments.
I have seen peasants not specially addicted to drunkenness
or other ruinous habits sink to a helpless state of
insolvency. Fortunately for such insolvent debtors,
they are treated by the law with extreme leniency.
Their house, their share of the common land, their
agricultural implements, their horse—­in
a word, all that is necessary for their subsistence,
is exempt from sequestration. The Commune, however,
may bring strong pressure to bear on those who do
not pay their taxes. When I lived among the peasantry
in the seventies, corporal punishment inflicted by
order of the Commune was among the means usually employed;
and though the custom was recently prohibited by an
Imperial decree of Nicholas II, I am not at all sure
that it has entirely disappeared.

Ivanofka may be taken as a fair specimen of the villages
in the northern half of the country, and a brief description
of its inhabitants will convey a tolerably correct
notion of the northern peasantry in general.

Nearly the whole of the female population, and about
one-half of the male inhabitants, are habitually engaged
in cultivating the Communal land, which comprises
about two thousand acres of a light sandy soil.
The arable part of this land is divided into three
large fields, each of which is cut up into long narrow
strips. The first field is reserved for the winter
grain—­that is to say, rye, which forms,
in the shape of black bread, the principal food of
the rural population. In the second are raised
oats for the horses, and buckwheat, which is largely
used for food. The third lies fallow, and is
used in the summer as pasturage for the cattle.

All the villagers in this part of the country divide
the arable land in this way, in order to suit the
triennial rotation of crops. This triennial system
is extremely simple. The field which is used this
year for raising winter grain will be used next year
for raising summer grain, and in the following year
will lie fallow. Before being sown with winter
grain it ought to receive a certain amount of manure.
Every family possesses in each of the two fields under
cultivation one or more of the long narrow strips
or belts into which they are divided.